Diamond lifted a hoof over Silver’s head, all she had to do was strike. One last time. One final, brutal time. She had the power. Killing her might have been possible.
But she hesitated. She hesitated… but Silver didn’t. The kick. Then the fight. That song. That dreadful, horrible song.
Knocking her away, thinking she’d cast the Alicorn Amulet from her. Her birthright. An amulet that belonged to the Avatar. Didn’t it?
Watching Tirek being drained of his power, destroyed. Shattered by Discord. Then seeing her frie-- seeing Silver turn towards her. Discord’s laugh echoing through her mind as the pony was replaced by the evil, cruel spirit. When he snapped his fingers his magic enveloped her, tearing her apart. Dragging her magic forcibly from her.
Diamond sat up with a shriek, her eyes wide and looking around frantically. She was covered in a cold sweat, but there was no danger. Only Celestia and Luna, the once powerful benders merely drinking what passed for tea. They had a spirit with them this time, a strange, small leaf-like creature. That was nice, there hadn’t been a spirit here in… she rarely saw spirits anymore.
“Another nightmare?” Celestia asked.
“Y-yes,” Diamond said before shaking her head. “I’m going… I don’t know where. I’ll… oh, who am I kidding? I’ll probably run into you again after.”
“Avatar…” Celestia said softly, before motioning towards a small bundle. “Take that. You aren’t a spirit, you’ll still require food.”
“Thank you,” Diamond said before grabbing it and tossing it into her saddlebag, then tossing that over her back. Once more she left the two behind, though she couldn’t help feeling she’d see them again. She wondered if it was the Spirit World driving them together or the two were just following her. Probably a bit of both.
Diamond didn’t know how long she walked this time, but she felt the presence soon enough. “You know, it might have made things easier if you’d done this a lot sooner.”
“Sorry,” Twilight said with a light chuckle, the alicorn walking besides her. “Couldn’t. I still don’t actually understand how this works. Honestly, I wonder if I’m here at all, or if this is just a--”
“Please don’t egghead at me right now,” Diamond said. “No offense, I’m just…”
“Not feeling well?” Twilight asked.
“More or less,” Diamond said. Still, if she had to choose which avatar would pop up and talk with her, she was happy it was Twilight. Most of the other avatars had a very… she didn’t like what they had to say. Even if they were right. “I don’t suppose you’ve had any more luck than me?”
“If I could, I would,” Twilight said. “But I’m not even entirely sure I still exist when we’re not talking. I mean, I feel like I do, but it’s not… quite the same. It’s a lot like being asleep. I sometimes can reach out a little bit, but it’s not quite the same as when I was alive.”
“Of course not,” Diamond said. “Everypony is looking to me, you know. They all think I’ll do something or pull out something. Like you did.”
“Yeah, that happens a lot,” Twilight said. “Life of being the Avatar, I guess.”
“I really wish I had been you,” Diamond said.
“You can’t be me anymore than I can be you,” Twilight said.
“I wish at least the elements still existed,” Diamond said. “Then it’d be so easy. Find out which of my friends are the five and then, bam. Done. Right?”
“It’s not… quite that simple, Diamond,” Twilight said before shaking her head. “I truly wish it was.”
“Yeah,” Diamond said. “I guess one of the five would probably be Discord then, wouldn’t she?” Try as she might, she couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice.
“I don’t think Discord could be an element,” Twilight said. “He’s… pretty counter to them.”
“Silver could have,” Diamond said. “Would have. Maybe. If I hadn’t… is this all my fault?”
“Your fault?” Twilight asked.
“If I hadn’t… if I hadn’t been so… if I’d not listened to Tirek,” Diamond said. “If I’d just… believed her. If I’d ignored him and just… what if we hadn’t fought there? What if we’d dealt with Tirek then and I just pretended that everything was fine. Would they be?”
“I don’t know,” Twilight said.
“She lied to me,” Diamond said softly. “It’s not… Honesty was one of the important pieces, right? Of the elements? So she lied to me. So she couldn’t be my friend, could she?”
Twilight gave a soft, gentle sigh before shaking her head. “Applejack taught me how important honesty is.”
“And?” Diamond asked.
“And so I can honestly say I don’t know,” Twilight said. “Discord was a cruel, vicious, monstrous spirit. He reveled in ruining the lives of those around him. But I don’t know how much of him is in her. Enough of my friends had been… corrupted by his influence that I can’t truly judge Silver based on that.”
For a while after that the pair walked in silence before Diamond spoke up once more. “I haven’t really changed, have I?”
“I’m sorry?” Twilight asked. “Changed how?”
“From how I started,” Diamond said softly. “I’m still just as selfish and arrogant as ever. Everypony keeps telling me I’ve grown up and matured, but I don’t really feel like I have. I still want to just have everything my way and ignore the consequences.”
“You wouldn’t have seen it this way before, would you?” Twilight asked. “You may want things the same way, but the things you want now are far different from then.”
Diamond gave another soft sigh before stepping into a small clearing. The only thing inside it was an ancient altar in the center, once overgrown but now most of the grass had wilted away. Still, it felt… oddly familiar. She supposed it must have connected in some way to her past lives then. “I don’t want to fight my friend,” Diamond said softly. “Even if she is Discord, even if she’s been playing me all this time, I don’t want to fight her. It’s not fair! I want… I want my friend back. It’d be like asking me to fight Button or Acrylic or Prism. Or Blaze. Or Daring. Heck, even Ironwing. Well, okay, him I wouldn’t mind dumping in the lake but I wouldn’t want to kill him. There’s so many…” She trailed off when she realized she was alone. She hated it when the avatars did that. It was nice that she could talk to them now, but she wished she had a bit more control over it.
Diamond trotted to the altar and leapt on top of it. It wasn’t fair. Discord wasn’t supposed to be her friend. He was supposed to corrupt her and her friends. He was supposed to fight her. Be her big enemy. He was supposed to try to kill her.
But he wasn’t supposed to be her friend. She closed her eyes and, once more, began to meditate.
------
Layer upon layer she peeled back, digging further and further back within herself. Questioning each past life she met, but the answers were always the same. She had a duty. A bad spirit had to be stopped. Discord was an enemy. Some avatars failed, some succeeded, some made mistakes. But in the end, they all shared the same duty. Harmony.
“You’re not going to stop, are you?” a voice asked. When Diamond’s eyes opened, a blue alicorn was sitting in front of her. Entirely blue, his coat and mane like ice.
“No,” Diamond said softly. “I need to know who Discord truly is. I need to know what we are. Why do we have to fight?”
The alicorn gave a soft sigh. “You want to know who Discord is… very well. I’ll show you.” He held out his hoof.
“Who are you?” Diamond asked.
“My name is Icemane,” he said. “As far as I know… I was the first to fall for Discord’s treachery. His first step into the destruction he wrought.”
Diamond gulped and stared at the hoof. “You… were?”
“If you wish to know what he was, I’ll show you,” Icemane said. “But… it won’t be pretty. This takes place long, long, long before anything you know. So many lifetimes. I’ll show you how cunning and wicked Discord is and the power he can truly wield. How manipulative he is.”
“Show me…” Diamond said before, very slowly, reaching a hoof out towards him.
“Very well,” Icemane said. Their hooves touched and the world vanished around them.
------
“Long ago the four nations--” Icemane started.
“Lived in Harmony, I know,” Diamond said, cutting him off.
“Didn’t exist,” Icemane said.
A moment later the world seemed to come into being around Diamond. She was standing on the edges of an ancient city. Overhead, pegasi were flying, while on the ground earth ponies and unicorns were walking about.
Diamond felt a rush of excitement. Finally. Would this be the last one? Would this give her the answers she so desperately sought?
Icemane was standing in the middle of a small arena, a whip of water attached to his horn with which he was deflecting blasts of fire from a unicorn. His form seemed a little sloppy, if she was going to be honest. Sure, she wasn’t the best water bender, but he just kept deflecting and backing away. How could he hope to win if--
Then the ground erupted under him and an earth pony came from below, shooting a flurry of rocks. He took to the sky, narrowly spinning through the air and avoiding a blast of fire while the water whipped around him. He shot straight up, only to pull a tight U-turn and plummet towards the ground…
Narrowly avoiding a pegasus who had come diving from above. He landed front hooves first, swirling on them to avoid another blast of fire. The whip shot out, coiling around the hoof of the earth bender. He twisted around, spinning tightly and hauling the earth bender out of the ground and chucking him up into the air, causing him to fly into the pegasus.
“Why are you showing me this?” Diamond asked. “So you were a powerful bender.”
“No, I wasn’t,” Icemane said.
Diamond cocked an eye. A moment later the fire bender was thrown into the other two, crashing into a pile. “You look like you did pretty well.”
“I was a powerful water bender,” Icemane said. “I favored one element above the others. I knew them, but I didn’t use them. To me, wings were just for flying, fire was just to keep you warm and the earth was, well. I barely used it at all.”
“So? Most avatars favor one element,” Diamond said.
“No,” Icemane said before the world around them began to shift. “I don’t mean just in fighting.”
A moment later they were in a field and Icemane was fighting more earthbenders this time, except there were some water bender unicorns with him. It wasn’t much of a fight, either. The earth benders were outmatched quickly, shards of ice piercing the ground and digging them out of it with a rather vicious ease. Diamond couldn’t help but cringe at that. “What, uhhhh…”
“Some tensions were breaking out between a group of water benders and earth benders,” Icemane said. “I, of course, favored with who I saw as my ponies. I didn't see them as anymore than that. But you see, that... was where it started.”
Once more the world around them seemed to move at a rapid pace. There were other ponies talking to Icemane. Yelling, screaming, finally he just turned and stormed off. Leaving the city behind.
“I was young, naive,” Icemane said. “I thought I was the only pony who knew what was right. That the other benders didn’t matter as much. Or, rather, that they were less important. The water benders raised the moon and helped to gather the water for the rain and clouds. The fire benders could make the sun, but if it was around too long it did too much damage. The air benders wove the weather. The earth benders tended to the land, but without the others they could grow nothing. There was a balance, but I didn’t see it that way. All I saw was my own authority and power. I was a water bender first, an avatar second. There were… plenty… who decided to take advantage of that fact. I chose to ignore it. When the evidence was shown to me, I grew angry and argumentative. Running from the issue rather than trying to deal with it. Even as the rift continued to grow, I did nothing.”
The vision moved about and she could see his home in more clarity. There was some damage, though. Some homes were newer, better maintained and some were crumbling apart. Damaged. But the more she looked, the more she realized the damaged home were rarely belonging to unicorns, usually pegasi and earth pony.
“Tensions had been rising for quite a while, you see,” Icemane said. “Long before I was born. My home was the focal point, the center of our world. But other smaller villages, towns and cities were experiencing the same. I didn’t realize why until it was too late.”
They were in a large room a moment later, Icemane near the back. At least a dozen unicorns were in the room, yelling. “The fire benders are too destructive. They must be reigned in! They wiped out half a field with their little ‘spat’ today.”
“The earth benders have been talking about raising their prices again! How are we supposed to feed our ponies if they just keep taking advantage of all our work?”
“Those wind storms are getting out of control! How can the air benders claim to control the weather one moment, then the next they say it’s all a freak accident?”
“I didn’t know at the time,” Icemane said a moment after the world seemed to stop. “But this was happening everywhere.”
“What about the non-benders?” Diamond asked.
“There were none,” Icemane said. “That is… we didn’t think there was. Until a child was born. A child of a fire bender and a water bender. Honestly, I can’t even remember their name. It didn’t matter, though. It wasn’t who they were. It was what they represented. They called the child the ‘tainted’. Many believed it was why I was chosen. That it was my duty to… stop it…”
“Stop… it?” Diamond asked, a small wave of dread washing over her. “Wait, how do you…”
“They were a foal,” Icemane said, shaking his head. “I was many things. But… I couldn’t kill a foal. Yet there was so much panic. I didn’t know what to do. So I went to the only place I could think to. The spirits for help. For guidance. How to fix this.”
“They wanted you to kill a foal?” Diamond asked, a hoof moving to her mouth. “Because they weren’t a bender?”
“Because they signified our end,” Icemane said. “In some ways, they did. Or rather… the panic they caused did.. The harmony that gave so many of us ponies our abilities was crumbling. And that was when I met him…”
“Him?” Diamond asked.
Suddenly they were in the Spirit World. Except it was so much more alive and bustling than the one from her time. Spirits danced through the trees and watched Icemane as he walked across the path.
Eventually he stopped in front of a strange, stone altar. The same one that she was now meditating on, except newer and surrounded by living grass, not decay. He climbed onto it and sat down, seemingly going into meditation.
A moment later a strange creature, an amalgamation of griffon, lion, dragon, pony and several other things. A draconequus. Worst of all, however, was she swore for a split second his eyes had turned to look at her.
Discord.